Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/15

 MY FRIENDS AND I: MEMORIES.

The grand scene lies before him in quiet repose,

On the calm, sleeping lake, his glad vision returns,

Nature's harmony there his vague doubting o'erflows— From the joy in his soul the true way he learns !

God is speaking in nature; once more by the breeze

Gently points to the spires— they something would say

As they lift up their heads from among the tall trees- Chanted softly it comes—" we all point the same way."

��MY FRIENDS AND I: MEMORIES.

��BY L. W. DODGE.

��The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of night.

As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in its flight.

.—Longfellow.

I have been standing with my face to the eastern window, watching the day- light fade away, and the night come down so gloriously, and the starry senti- nels as one by one they take their sta- tions in the deep-blue vault above. I was gazing dreamily, scarce knowing or car- ing why, when a meteor, a swift gliding star that seemed to have been resting in its allotted place near the zenith, left its throne of glory and went suddenly rush- ing down the farther sky, vanishing be- low the dim horizon, leaving behind a long train of fading splendor, as quickly to be gathered up, like stray sunbeams.

Why may not our lives be thus, 1 mused, scattering blessings, as a train of brilliants, along our illuminated path- way?

But how incidents and happenings, trivial enough in themselves, sometimes will send our minds a wandering ; and how one idea will follow another, until our thoughts run riot, like school-boys chasing butterflies in meadow pastures, running and leaping and singing with the mountain brook, hunting birds' nests in sunny glades, gathering nuts among the squirrel-haunted beech-woods.

These sudden flashes or passages of thought from one subject to another are sometimes quite startling, and yet there seems to be a sort of a gliding along, per- haps by association.

��Just now, as that flying meteor went shedding its glories adown the east, it suggested— for it is the Christmas night- thoughts of that piloting orb which start- led the shepherds, two thousand years ago, from their oriental slumbers upon the hills of Judea, and guided the Heaven-appointed seekers to the feet of the infant author of that simple faith which cheers the hearts of men wherever the story of the Christ- child is told among the sons and daughters of earth, to this day.

And perhaps that same gliding star that even now scattered its scintillations ' above this western world, may be look- ing down upon some weary watcher upon Bethlehem's plain, as he listens beneath a waving palm-tree for the muezzin's call to prayer at the first flush of expected morn.

Now comes a flood of overwhelming memories, and, seated by the firelight in my little library, I have been watching the cheerful glow of the bright-red coals, and dreaming away an hour in reveries whereof I must tell you, and if you list- en you will know why that gleaming star, hastening beyond the east, suggest- ed these musings; or, if I can put them to paper, and you follow my pen, you may see, although I shall fail to make them as interesting to you as I could wish.

We will not call it a story, but rather a history, for it is a narrative of events in the lives of two young hearts, even-

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